In CDMA mobile communications, the output data (transmitted data) from a voice codec undergoes primary modulation, followed by secondary modulation using a pseudorandom sequence (spreading code sequence), to be spectrum-spread to a wideband signal and transmitted. The bit rate of the spreading code sequence is called a chip rate, and is tens to hundreds of times faster than the transmission rate. Generally, the primary modulation uses binary or quadrature phase shift keying, and the secondary modulation uses binary phase shift keying.
Considering voice communications, the information amount of a transmitted voice signal is not constant, but varies from time to time. Accordingly, the transmission rate can be changed by dividing the transmitted data into frames of a fixed duration, and by transmitting data of a variable bit length in each frame, thereby achieving effective transmission of information in each frame period. This can obviate useless transmission, thereby saving power consumption of the transmitter.
The following method is taken to transmit data of a different transmission rate in the CDMA system. First, data whose transmission rate is lower than the frame transmission rate is transmitted using a part of transmission frames (see, for example, R. Padovani, "Reverse link performance of IS-95 based cellular systems", IEEE Personal Communications, vol.1, pp.28-34, 3rd Quarter 1994). On the other hand, data whose transmission rate is higher than the frame transmission rate is divided into a plurality of transmission channels, and the divided data are spread using different spreading codes to be transmitted.
It is necessary in this method, however, to provide a receiving side with the transmission rate information. Alternatively, when the transmission rate information is not provided, it is necessary to predetermine the values the transmission rate can take, to carry out the error detection of the received data for all the transmission rates, and to output the received data with the transmission rate at which the error is not detected as the right data.
In this case, if an error occurs during the transmission of the transmission rate information, the effective length in the received frames cannot be decided, which makes it difficult to correctly recover the transmitted data at the receiving side even if no error has occurred during the data transmission.
Thus, it is difficult for the conventional data transmission method to vary the transmission rate during the communications to achieve a variable rate transmission. In addition, when the data is transmitted at a rate considerably lower than a maximum transmission rate, burst transmission occurs because of blanks in the frames, during which data transmission is not carried out. Such burst-like transmission presents a problem in that it causes an EMI (Electromagnetic Interference).
FEC (Forward Error Correction) of the transmitted data is generally used to improve the transmission quality in the case where many errors can occur during transmission as in a mobile communications environment. In this case, the transmitting side transmits transmitted data (including the transmission rate information) which has undergone error correcting encoding, and the receiving side carries out the error correcting decoding followed by extraction of the transmission rate information to decide the effective data length in each received frame. Accordingly, the transmission rate information cannot be obtained until the end of the error correcting decoding. Thus, the decoding is performed before deciding the data length to be decoded, and hence the error correction cannot fully achieve its effect.
On the other hand, there are some data in the transmitted data that can greatly degrade the received data quality when they are corrupted. For example, control data requires transmission quality higher than voice data. Also, the voice data includes some which can greatly degrade the quality and others which cannot, depending on the voice encoding method. In other words, the transmitted data includes data of various degrees of importance.
In view of this, a transmission method is adopted in TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), which uses error correcting codes of different correcting power in accordance with the degree of importance of the transmitted data (see, for example, "Personal digital cellular telecommunication system RCR standard, RCR STD-27", Research & Development Center for Radio System). This method, however, lacks flexibility to transmit various data of different transmission rates.
As described above, high speed data is divided and spread to a plurality of signals using different spreading codes, and the spread signals are combined to be transmitted. To demodulate such signals at a receiving side using coherent detection, the transmitting side must periodically inserts pilot symbols into transmitted data (see, for example, S. Sampei, "Fading Compensation for 16QAM in Land Mobile Communications", The Transactions of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan B-II, Vol. J72-B-II pp. 7-15, January 1989, or its revised version, S. Sampei, et al. "Rayleigh Fading Compensation for QAM in Land Mobile Radio Communications", IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, VOL. 42. No. 2, MAY 1993). This method will make it necessary for the plurality of transmission channels to send the same pilot symbols when the method is applied to the signals spread with the plurality of the spreading codes. The respective channels, however, experience the same fading, and hence it is unnecessary to send the pilot symbols through the plurality of channels. Since multiple users share the same frequency band in CDMA, transmission of superfluous signals will reduce the number of users that can be accommodated in a limited frequency band because it will increase interference to other users by an amount corresponding to the transmission power necessary to send the superfluous signals.
Furthermore, the high speed signal must be divided into a plurality of signals followed by spreading using different spreading codes and by combining of the spread signals, and the combined signal is converted into a radio frequency band followed by power amplification to be transmitted. If the plurality of spread signals are combined in the same phase, the amplitude of the combined signal will increase in proportion to the number of divided signals. This will require a high peak power liner transmission power amplifier. Such a power amplifier demanding large power consumption is unsuitable to portable telephones which require low power consumption.